Other Defences of Existentialism: De Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity is one of three sustained defences of existentialism which were offered in the 1940s.¹ The remaining two defences were furnished by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre. Merleau-Ponty’s defence is to be found chiefly in his essays The Battle over Existentialism’, Les Temps Modernes, No. 2, November 1945, ‘Metaphysics and the Novel’, Cahiers du Sud, No. 270, March 1945, and ‘A Scandalous Author’, Figaro Littéraire, 6 December 1947, but also, if to a less obvious extent, in the essays ‘The War Has Taken Place’, Les Temps Modernes, No. 1, October 1945, and The Metaphysical in Man’, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, Nos 3–4, July 1947. I shall now summarize the main lines of thought in these essays — from the general perspective of the defence of existentialism — before comparing Merleau-Ponty’s defence with that of Simone de Beauvoir.